Ketan speaking to SON about Pink Chaddis, over breakfast…the expected converstaion:

Son: [sing-song voice] Good morning dad! What a lovely day! Do you like the new outfit I designed in fashion school?? Isn’t it FABULOUS. It is supposed to capture the freshness of Spring – you see the side vents gape to allow fresh air to get in and circulate around inside my clothes and also freshen up my chaddis at the same time!! No pools of sweat building up!! And the chaddis have to be pink because I think that is the freshest colour in Spring!!

K: [thinks: AAAAARRRGGGHHH!!] Hmmmm. Son, as I havwe said many times, I respect your fashion design capabilities greatly. However, I think that if you go out dressed like that, people may not respect you and I would be very sad if you lost respect.

Son: Oh Dad! Don’t be so square! I am an ARTIST! I do not care WHAT people think. All artists are avante garde! We have to be because we are at the cutting edge! We decide what happens, BEFORE it happens! Get hip Dad!

K: No Son – realy – I care about you very deeply and am trying to give you my best advice. It is painful to be laughed at! Plus I have seen fashion designers like Giorgio Armani – he always dresses respectfully in navy shirts and slacks – you never see his chaddis sticking out like yours – pools of sweat or not!!

Son: But Dad – all my friends dress like this! Its who we are! Armani is SO yesterday! We are the voice of tomorrow!

K: Okay. I have tried to reason with you but you will not listen. So I have no choice but to tell you to march right back into your room and reconsider your dressing choices! While you live under my roof, you follow some codes of decorum!

Son: [sing-song voice] Good morning dad! What a lovely day! Do you like the new outfit I designed in fashion school?? Isn’t it FABULOUS. It is supposed to capture the freshness of Spring – you see the side vents gape to allow fresh air to get in and circulate around inside my clothes and also freshen up my chaddis at the same time!! No pools of sweat building up!! And the chaddis have to be pink because I think that is the freshest colour in Spring!!

K: [thinks, if you can’t beat them, then join them and beat them at their own game!!!] What a DIVINE outfit (high pitched squeal). I was just thinking son, we don’t do enough things together! I would like to join you in your fashion….may I borrow one of your outfits and we can go out together!!

Son: [thinks, ARRRRGGGHHHH!!] Oh, Dad no! I was thinking that you look so elegant in your Armani suit! Why change a classic??

K: No, seriously – because I want to hang out with you and be cool and properly aerated!!

Son: Okay Dad! You are right! We should do more together! Why don’t I wear my Armani suit and join YOU!!

K: Oh son…you would do that for me?? Isn’t it asking too much for you to give up your FABULOUS fashion??

Son: No! No! I want to make a new fashion statement – conservative is back!!!

K: [smiles sweetly!]

—–*—–

Thanks, Sioneve a lot! This was truly a lovely post! Thanks for giving me such premature tips on parenting! I’ll follow them as soon as I suffer from ventriculomegaly, or broadmindedness, in other words! Or till, I have a son, whichever is later!

Disclaimer to my SON wherever he be: See, it’s only my decorum that’s keeping me from stating the obvious truth here that I won’t be half as broadminded as portrayed in even the first version of our conversation! Say hello! to Sioneve auntie! Okay, now if you want such ventilatory chaddis, just see how broadminded I am (click)!

Hey KetanThanks so much for including this here as a guest blog! I am laughing VERY hard at your disclaimer to your (future) son!! 😆Ventilatory chaddis indeed!! 😆 Auntie Sioneve will be around to Put things right if they go anything like this!!! Hope your studies are progressing well.Bye. S

Ketan my friend – you must get married and procreate. Then you have the chance to pass on your intellect genetically and your knowledge through nurturing your progeny. But please marry someone you love to talk to (and not just for her pink chaddis)…that way you will never get bored with each other! 😉

Shristi – Thanks! It may not surprise you to know that I am a mum of 2 already!! There are many such exchanges in my household (I haven’t come across the pink chaddis hurdle yet…but if I do, I shall be prepared!!…and my darling husband is perpetually baffled!! Although we hav a plan…if my darling daughters bring home any unsuitable types (of the male variety), then my husband will greet them at the door…NAKED…and offer them a cup of tea! Hoping this will never happen…but it pays to be prepared!!! Have a great day! S

Rakesh and Vishwas – Thanks! Glad you’re laughing. I expect Ketan’s child(ren) (male or female) will be very intellectually capable – so chances are, yes, he will have interesting exchanges with them!! Have a great day! S

As you know I love talking a lot, and if I have a wife I’d love talking to, and provided she’d love talking back to me, I’m afraid we’ll forget to procreate! 😛

And going by the projected intellect of my SON, the whole idea isn’t seeming very enticing! 😦

Also see one more spoiler in my response below to TUIB. 😦

@ Sakhi:

Thanks and welcome to the blog!

Glad, you approve of my way of dealing with my son, rather than Sioneve auntie’s!

Also, a couple of week back I’d left a comment on your story dealing with two surgeons who’d loved each other running into each other after many years.

@ TUIB:

My all the genes are so badly damaged, and hence unique that my son’s mom’s are going to be radically different from mine. So, how my son, or for that matter, daughter turn out would soooo much depend on whose alleles win the respective battles!

But you know I’m so filled with laziness that I’m sure, my lazy alleles would give up very fast quickly, or probably would be happy to let the maternal alleles do all the work. So I think you must get the hint that basically, my progeny would be like their mom! 😉

@ Freudian Slip:

Yes, yes, my Alzheimer’s is catching up fast! And with such obsolescent ideas I harbor, no doubt my ventricles must resemble box cars! 😛 How I wish by the time my son starts designing all those dresses, I’d blithely smile at him, having forgotten he’d be my son! 😉

Even if I propose to her, Donatella Versace won’t marry me. 😦 I’d be too young and un-fashionable for her. 😦 Though, it’s a different matter that my passive, lazy alleles can be ‘fashioned’ by any nick, splice or cut. And yet, they’d always remain a misfit 😦

Also, what to tell you, my alleles are at the height… no wait, attaining any kind of height requires gravity-defying *work*… So my alleles are at the depth (yay, only requires a free fall! 😉 ) of laziness. And my alleles would get crushed.

Well so, you’re right, Donu (chuch a chweet name!) is not going to marry me for my own good!

So you mean, female human(s) who might be willing to marry me, exist?

Waah! Tumhare munh mein ghee-shakkar! Okay, spit it out if you’re dieting and trying to fit into one of the Versace outfits!

Thanks for all the good wishes! All the best to your alleles, too! 😛 TC.

Thanks Tumultuous Suspension (wow great name – are you a physicist or a chemist by any chance??)

Ketan…My closest friend at Uni was just like you you – she always told me how anti-work she was and how lazy she was…she wouldn’t even open exam results because she claimed to be too lazy!! She used to spen entire Sundays in bed, reading or watching documentaries. And yet now, she is one of the most qualified people I know (with about 14 letters after her name) and is a very respected opthalmologist. I suspect that you are similar in disposition…and it’s definitely the kind of laziness I approve of! 🙂

Speaking of chaddis (or not)…you may appreciate this exchange with my 5 year old – from just this morning: 5yo: Mummy, are ‘underwears’ funny? [she always calls them ‘underwears’…I guess because a pair of anything is plural]ME: Not especially – why?5yo: because the boys at school keep laughing about bottoms and underwears.ME: [concerned] were they laughing at YOUR undies or bottom?5yo: no – they just yell out: “BOTTOM” or “UNDERWEARS” and laugh a lot. Then they chase each other around. But I don’t get the joke or why they run!ME: ahh Sweetpea…you will find many boys in your life who laugh at bottoms and undies…as long as you keep yours under your clothes, and as long as the boys are not running towards you, there is nothing to worry about! [sigh]

So Ketan…what is your diagnosis on the boys’ behaviour and mental states??? 🙂

My only diagnosis is that gender-equality hasn’t completely reached the shores of Australia! 😉 Otherwise, girls would’ve also been doing the same!

Curiously, in India too, boys tend to enjoy lewd (with sexual connotations, which we colloquially call ‘nonveg’ in India) jokes at earlier age. I’d got my overdosage of nonveg jokes in my 8th class, and by tenth, I’d got sick of them, excep for if they’d really humorous. But then I found out that girls who would be expected to be ‘nice’ would also enjoy such jokes, but at somewhat later age, and owing to till-that-time-repressed urge to share such jokes, with much greater enthusiasm even quite beyond their adolescence.

You sure, you don’t want people’s chaddis sticking out? 😉

Also, is your friend one of the regular commentator on your blogs?

Have you realized, even without your conscious attempt majority of those responding on your posts (including you) have been professionally related to the medical sciences? 😉

TC.

PS: Tumultuous Suspension writes most wonderful posts. And she keeps very busy so is unlikely to respond back to your question. So though I’m tempted to answer your query, I refrain in my attempt to make you curious enough to go through her blog, and also because it would be inappropriate for me to reveal! 😉

After the near-total hiatus, only one post has come up! The hiatus notice is not all that old. Yes, bringing up children would be difficult, and that I suppose should be adequate incentive for use of contraception! 😛 Or to stay bachelor!

“My only diagnosis is that gender-equality hasn’t completely reached the shores of Australia! 😉 Otherwise, girls would’ve also been doing the same!” Hmmmm – interesting! Sometimes I wish that little boys would equilibrate with girls – instead of the other way around!!I remember in Grade 2: a little girl told the teacher how a little boy had said “bottom” to her and that he should be punished for being so rude! I don’t know how the teacher kept a straight face through that conversation!! Yes – us ‘medical types’ (of which I am an honourary member) tend to stick together! S

Actually, though I’d said this before, I was actually somewhat shocked to learn of those accounts about the jokes the little boys even in Australia make as the situation is exactly like India’s! I’d, owing to better literacy, and lower economic problems, expected parents there to be more broadminded. But it was disheartening for me to know that the same gender stereotypes play a role in the Western society, too 😦

Actually, you’ve made a good point about wanting “boys to turn girly, rather than girls turning boy-ly” (okay, what a funny sentence, but I intended it to be that way 🙂 ). Actually, this also only indicates our deep seated prejudices as to how girls or boys should be. But then, actually many of the perceived gender differences are because of hormones and and underlying neurology (your specialization 🙂 ), and not just societal conditioning. Like, oxytocin is responsible for nurturing behavior. Imagine, a lady finding a pup cute could largely be because of oxytocin. And obviously, males have less of it! 😉 Also, women suffering from ovarian tumors secreting androgens may develop antisocial personality! Those males with extra Y chromosome are largely normal, but only somewhat taller, and hold your breath… more aggressive! Whereas, those suffering from Klinefelter syndrome (simply speaking, males with an extra X chromosome) can be mentally retarded!…

…My only point is, because of reasons we cannot help, real statistical gender equality is a bit difficult to achieve. But equally important, I believe, is not to ridicule at those departing from the general trends. There are gender-specific traits, and important is to respect them! I’ve seen too many boys/men and girls/women, trying to breach the gender-barrier through most unfortunate means only to gain popularity among the opposite gender and to look ‘modern’. Many guys in their attempt to seem metrosexual, project themselves to be emotionally sensitive, unable to handle difficulties in life, etc., and when they end up in a relationship with someone liking them out of sympathy, the farce becomes very difficult to sustain in personal life, and there are obviously, difficulties. Likewise, girls taking to smoking and drugs, only to seem as ‘cool’ as guys is most unfortunate. What they paradoxically do by imbibing ‘bad’ traits attributed generally to males is to further the myth that:

“Somehow, males are superior to females! And that for genuine gender equality females must try to emulate males, rather than loving themselves and being proud for what (females) they naturally are!”

Well, I could only end by saying society and ‘people’ in it are complex, and happiest are those who love themselves!!!

I did not get sticking together-part in the last paragraph of your comment above. 😦